2.2 KiB
id, aliases, title, tags
| id | aliases | title | tags | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Favorite Quotes |
|
Favorite Quotes
About Tools
[!quote] John Culkin, commonly attributed to Marshall McLuhan We shape our tools and, thereafter, our tools shape us.
[!quote] thoreau_1854_walden, Henry David Thoreau Men have become the tools of their tools.
[!quote] Jeff Duntemann A good tool improves the way you work. A great tool improves the way you think.
[!quote] Alan Watts We are sick with a fascination for the useful tools of names and numbers, of symbols, signs, conceptions, and ideas.
[!quote] Paul Arden If you get stuck, draw with a different pen. Change your tools; it may free your thinking.
About Incentives
[!quote] Charlie Munger Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome.
[!cite] Goodhart's Law When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.
About Process Optimization
"Sharpen the Axe"
Frequently misattributed to Abraham Lincoln is some variation of:
[!quote] Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.
For the legitimate origin of the quote see reverend-william-h-alexander.
I think when people use some version of the quote in real life it's usually to justify second definition yak shaving (at least that's usually when I use it).
[!quote] Ecclesiastes 10:10 King James Version If the iron be blunt, and he do not whet the edge, then must he put to more strength: but wisdom is profitable to direct.
I like the story because it's well known and easily interpreted as an optimization problem.
About Learning
[!quote] hubbard_2020_failure#Why It's Hard To Know What Works The placebo effect might not be as persistent if it were easier to learn from our experience... But learning is not a given in any environment.
About Originality
[!quote] Brian Eno, A Year With Swollen Appendices, p. 67 A way of doing something original is by trying something so painstaking that nobody else has ever bothered with it.